A History of the Defense Intelligence Agency - Cryptocomb

DIA faced difficult transitional years in the early
1970s, as the Agency shifted focus from consolidating
internal and external management roles to
establishing itself as a credible producer of national
intelligence. Sweeping manpower cuts between
1968 and 1975 reduced Agency manpower by thirty-one
percent, a situation that led to sharp mission
reductions and broad organizational restructuring.
The attaché system also underwent major changes.
In 1970, DoD created a position for an Assistant
Secretary of Defense (Intelligence) (ASD/I) to supervise
Defense intelligence programs and to provide
the principal point for coordination with the Director
of Central Intelligence as well as other intelligence
officials outside DoD. President Nixon also reorganized
the national Intelligence Community (IC) and
designated DIA’s Director as the program manager
for a newly established General Defense Intelligence
Program (GDIP), which coordinated and managed
defense intelligence as a whole.
In 1974, DIA established a J-2 Support Office to
better satisfy JCS’s intelligence needs. In October of
that year, the Agency began a comprehensive overhaul
of its production functions, organization, and
management. As part of this reorganization, DIA
created a cadre of Defense Intelligence Officers
(DIOs), who served as the DIA Director’s senior
staff representatives on major intelligence matters.
Diplomatic and military dilemmas continued
as well. DIA confronted a variety of issues in the
early 1970s, including the rise of Ostpolitik (West
Germany’s efforts at deténte with the East), the
emergence of the Palestine Liberation Organization
(PLO) in the Middle East, and increased
concerns about controlling the proliferation of nuclear
weapons. Massive shipyard riots in Gdansk,
Poland, civil wars in Jordan and Nigeria, and U.S.
activities in Cambodia also required the agency’s
attention. In other crises, the DIA monitored Idi
Amin’s assumption of power in Uganda, unrest in
Pakistan, and continued fighting in Southeast Asia.
The Agency’s reputation grew considerably by the
mid-1970s as decisionmakers increasingly noted
DIA’s ability to respond to such a variety of crises.
Meanwhile, a specially convened conference
in Williamsburg, Virginia in 1972 examined the
effects of DIA resource reductions. Conference
participants recommended putting more emphasis
on exploiting technology for agency purposes
and upgrading DIA’s National Military Intelligence
Center (NMIC). New global challenges made these
changes even more urgent. North Vietnam’s overwhelming
offensive into South Vietnam forced DIA
and its Defense Attaché Office in Saigon to plan for
the evacuation of American civilians and their Vietnamese
allies. The civil war in Angola expanded
into a proxy war between Eastern and Western Bloc
nations, which required DIA to provide policymakers
with constantly updated information on Soviet
intentions in southern Africa. DIA’s knowledge
of Soviet military capabilities became particularly
important when the U.S.S.R. threatened to intervene
in the Yom Kippur War in the Middle East, the
closest the world had come to a war between the
superpowers since the Cuban Missile Crisis. DIA
also monitored Soviet compliance with the Anti-
Ballistic Missile (ABM) and Strategic Arms Limitation
Talks (SALT) agreements.
(Left) The defaced seal of the United States Embassy in Tehran.
In November 1979, radical Iranian students stormed the
Embassy and took over sixty hostages.
A History